Experience sci-fi tactical combat and exploration in a procedural world that combines traditional roguelikes with an immersive modern interface like no other. Build yourself from components found or salvaged from other robots. Attach power sources, propulsion units, utilities, and weapons to become a slow tank bristling with weapons, or a fast-moving flier zipping past enemies before they even have time to react, or a stealthy sword-wielding assassin/hacker, or whatever else you can come up with from the salvage you find. The situation can quickly change as you lose components and rebuild yourself from enemy remains. You are the Cogmind. Discover what that means as you explore a living, breathing world ruled by robots.

Since the 7.1 release last week I've been hard at work on Beta 8, with a bunch of that time spent in REXPaint on new art. Some of you may know what that means... yet more parts!

That's just a small sampling to whet your appetite ;)

Fortunately it's not just me who's been up to producing art, so we can also feast our eyes upon Cogmind-related works from the community! There's been quite a lot of it over the past few weeks...

Hall of Heroes

Zyalin has been enjoying the world's atmosphere so much that he's chosen to share his impressions of the Heroes of Zion. These are only minor NPCs which don't play a part in the plot lines, but they have a lot of personality, making them good candidates for portraits. Over the past few weeks he's been sharing them with us over on Discord, having just recently finished the series.

ME-RLN

1C-UTU

7V-RTL

NK-0LA

P1-3CE

AD-0RF

99-TNT

CL-ANK

12-ASH

Having finished the heroes, Zyalin has continued drawing more bots, though now simply inspired by the world rather than anything directly from the game.

There's Zerbe-RIF:

A scary escaped prototype which has reportedly "stolen the last copy of NetHack" xD

And this great derelict with what could be a stolen pair of nice legs and a whole bunch of duct tape!

Datasheets

Not too long ago KernelPanic initially started sharing pixel art conversions of Cogmind's ASCII parts (their first attempt at pixel art, no less!):

Also eventually experimenting with new styles:

But then the parts started finding their way into these cool data sheets:

"Halloween version" for the Recycler :P

Cogmics

Pioneered by PlasticHeart, I've shared a few before but so-called "cogmics" have recently become a wider thing in the community, with at least 5-6 separate people (lost count xD) using their own cogmic style to share Cogmind jokes about the world, strategies, or even the community itself. Here are a few I've picked out...

PlasticHeart cogmics:

Gotta hate those surprise ARCs! (or any number of other surprises when opening doors without sensor data xD)

Using the new 7.1 RIF to loop garrisons (this one was specifically drawing Pimski doing it in -1/Access for what has become the second-highest ever scoring Cogmind run, which you can see on the leaderboards now).

New players are generally inundated with good advice on arrival on the Discord, but sometimes there are jokes as well :P

Lots of strategy discussion and sharing regarding established builds...

Zyalin draws Raine as she goes for the Mad Max achievement, then accidentally picks up a prototype flight unit next to the wheel she wanted. Oops!

Allied Operators are great, by Zyalin.

8FPS lamenting the Beta 7 fix which blocked the cheese tactic of safely crushing a certain major NPC via treads without the usual repercussions.

Most recently, JackNine has been sharing some polished cogmics with a completely new perspective. (These include fun little details that are worth a second look, too :D)

Remember that Mines encounter?

(for me it's especially funny JackNine would make this connection, since a separate event I've been planning to add to the caves at some point is a more direct reference to this classic scene)

ASCII vs. tiles, Halloween edition!

How to deal with "programmers" :)

Many thanks to everyone for your artistic contributions! Some of the artists have been uploading their creations to the Images section on Steam, though not all so I thought I'd share some of my favorites as part of a progress update :D

Apostle of RIF

The Apostle of RIF bot-hacking run I started last time is complete, and I continued it across three more streams:

The written summary of that entire run (w/images) can be found on the forums. There was also extra time on the stream so I did another quick and destructive 7-weapon run. That was fun:

The same thread linked above includes a summary of this one.

Next week we'll have to start something new!

Scraps

My "How to Make a Roguelike" talk at the Roguelike Celebration is now also available in text form on the blog. It's a comprehensive primer on how to get started with roguelike development, with guidance and tips in 5,500 words and 84 images!

In other art-related news, Rex Quantum has scrapped together a printed Cogmind manual using leftover office supplies. How appropriate :P

Overall there won't be as many progress updates prior to Beta 8, if only because a good chunk of this dev time is going towards new content that'd be nice for everyone to explore on their own. Also a heads up: This is stuff that'll be accessible near the start of a run, so unlike a lot of other big content updates it won't require that you already be able to reach the mid- or late-game areas. Stay tuned for more!

No articles were found matching the criteria specified. We suggest you try the article list with no filter applied, to browse all available. Join now to share your own content, we welcome creators and consumers alike and look forward to your comments.

HOLY ****. Like, usually I wouldn't go for profanity and caps lock to voice my opinion, but the latest round of gifs are seriously good.

I haven't really played a roguelike of this old style since I sank hundreds upon hundreds of hours failing at Nethack. This revitalizes my love of this genre.

Like... in the mainstream, roguelikes have been being updated and reworked for current sensibilities by taking the ideology of the old school and applying it to new things. FTL for instance checks a bunch of roguelike boxes but is still a totally different beast. Permadeath, random generation, hard decisions and that high learning curve. It's a great game and probably my favourite to come from this permadeath resurgence.

This looks to checks all the same boxes, but it looks like it applies that ideology right back into the source genre? And with all the style and panache available. It's looks like everything I loved about old terminal rpgs, but what I imagined them to be rather than what they were. And I love that. The full gamut of colour and the incredible UI are wrinkling my brain with anticipation.

Thank you for the kind words (including the profanity, sure =p), and yep, the difference here is I'm more or less doing the reverse of what everyone else is doing. Good way to come up with something unique, eh? ;)

With regard to what you "imagine," that's exactly where I'm coming from! When I started working on this the whole idea was to produce this world I was imagining where the interface really comes to life, kind of like a mash-up between roguelikes and Hollywood terminal UIs (but where everything actually means something!). This approach doesn't make much sense with fantasy, the traditional roguelike setting, but with sci-fi it's a natural fit.

My brother was watching the (unreleased) trailer in his office recently and some co-workers came by and thought he was programming on some awesome new terminal, haha.

Alpha Access launches next week Tuesday if you're interested :D. The announcement will probably come to IndieDB a little late.

I just added that composite gif today since there wasn't anything yet showing off the tileset, and I have that one as the new lead gif for the updated website (not yet live).